Late Night Talk withAubrey Masango

Ford South Africa announced a safety recall for all Kuga 1.6l vehicles on Monday and asked that the vehicles be taken to a dealer as soon as possible for repair.

The safety recall is limited to vehicles manufactured between December 2012 and February 2014.

Ford CEO Jeff Nemeth says it took longer to make this decision because they had to do investigations to find out what caused the fires.

We take the safety of our customers as number one priority.

— Jeff Nemeth, Ford CEO

When asked why the company remained quiet while their vehicles were catching fire, Nemeth says he believes the company did very well in communicating with its customers through email, sms and calls asking them to bring in their vehicles for maintenance.

There is protocol laid out in the Consumer Protection Act that we have followed...

— Jeff Nemeth, Ford CEO

Ebrahim Mohamed, Commissioner of National Consumer Commission says there was no need for the commission to impose the recall of Ford Kugas because in terms of Consumer Protection Act, Ford has to be given an opportunity to do a voluntary recall.

Ford was only due to give a report of the investigation to the commission at the end of February, but because of the escalated number of burning vehicles, the commission had to act quicker.

Reshall Jimmy died after his Ford Kuga caught fire whilst he was on holiday in December 2015.